Rick Berman: Hollywood Hubris Maxed Out

Wow, this guy just makes it harder and harder to not bash on him. I have to say that the level of hubris (or perhaps denial) displayed by Rick Berman in regards to the demise of Star Trek: Enterprise is truly mind-boggling…

According to SciFi Wire, The latest “reason” put forward for the ratings slump of Enterprise is… are you ready…?

Star Trek reruns.

Yep, that’s right. Reruns. Check it out:

“I think that we found ourselves in competition with ourselves. Enterprise in many markets was running against repeats – whether it be cable or syndication – of the original series, Next Generation, Voyager [or] Deep Space Nine.”

This is in addition of course, to his “franchise fatigue” excuse:

“And I think that after 18 years and 624 hours of Star Trek the audience began to have a little bit of overkill with Star Trek, and I think that had a lot to do with it.”

Now perhaps Rick Berman can explain to us precisely how to reconcile the above two statements.

I mean, if we (the fans) are suffering from “franchise fatigue” and we’re just tired of Star Trek in general, how is it that one of the reasons that we’re not watching Enterprise is that we’re watching another Star Trek show instead??

Does that make any sense? Any sense at all?

This guy just keeps digging a hole for himself that gets deeper and deeper atop which one could place a tombstone stating: “Here lies the man that killed Star Trek.”

Or it might just possibly be that Berman and Braga were so creatively bankrupt that the show would have been better with them in a monastery in Tibet. If Enterprise had died at the end of the third season I don’t think anyone would have mourned. The fourth season which had minimal involvement from the Bobsey Twins of Star Trek, was clearly better than anything that had preceded it, thanks in no small part to Manny Cotto taking control.